2. I packaged all of the fonts and then some into one ZIP file. Download it here.Note. Someone somewhere might own these fonts and, thus, want money from you for their commercial use. I'll leave that purchase to you. You have the font names. Buying them is a Google search and a credit card away.

UPDATE 27 APR 2012: While the Futura font is very close to the one used by the BBGA, I think it might actually be a font called Prelo. I'll let you decide, as they're very similar fonts.

3. Here's a spreadsheet that uses all of this information. It won't look like much until you have the fonts installed, but the colours should be intact and the formulas correct: Download it here.

There may be a simpler way to do it, but I haven't found it yet. For this "home and student" (i.e. cheap) version of Office Mac 2008, here's how to select the colors:

1. Open the preferences window ( command+, ). You will see the box shown below.

2. Click on the Color preferences at the top right. You will see the standard color palette.

3. Click on one of the unused colors and click Modify. Navigate to the Image pane (4th icon at the top) in the Colors box, then select the magnifying glass icon. When you move the cursor, it will now appear as the magnifier icon. Center this on the color of the color you want to match, for example, in the BBGA document and click. Click OK.

4. Then select the cells you want this color and select it from the modified palette under the fill color icon.

I struggled with it for a week because they don't explain the calculations behind the calculated (orange) cells.

They say something like, "This is a calculated cell."

And the calculation is?

I guess that's the BBGA's way of saying, "When we mean you need to understand baker's percentages, we mean you really need to understand baker's percentages."

I think when everyone realizes that the format is self-checking and automatically scales, they'll jump on it. It's like a good accounting spreadsheet: If you subtract x from over here, you better add x over here!)

(I'm just worried I'm using version 1.0 when they've moved on the version 3.0 in later editions of their Breadlines magazine).

really learn baker's percentages you will find a whole world opens up to you in terms of formula development - I'm starting to work with them now in non bread endeavors and again, while I've baked a lot of different stuff for a lot of years, it's like a light has gone on in my tiny mind...

So that's why they stress the whole discipline. Not for them - but for you.

That's a heroic job you've done. I spent much of last week reconstructing BBGA's spreadsheet from scratch, but just using shades of gray, not wanting to make it any more complex than necessary. It was really frustrating to read their generously annotated description of the BBGA spreadsheet and not be able to find anywhere where BBGA was actually making the .xls file available. I guess you need to join, pay dues, etc to learn that secret handshake. So I made my own that looks a lot like yours, just B&W. I'm anxious to see if it calculates the same amounts as yours for the same formula!

I highly recommend TFLoafers to check out the BBGA spreadsheet description in Breadlines. It's a real education, if you can get past the frustration of not having the .xls file along with it.

With all due respect and for what it's worth, I find the BBGA format less confusing than that displayed here frequently by experts like Davd Snyder and Varda. For some reason, those one atop the other serial tables trip me up. And I can never tell what was entered and what their spreadsheets calculated. That's one really nice thing about the BBGA formula and their quirky color coding: it reveals clearly which cells are for your entry and which cells it will calculate for you.

Not that I've yet to make (37 bakes and counting) a single loaf of bread that we can actually eat more than one bite of. But at least now I think I can trust the formula I'm starting with. Seven more weekends before my promised "If you haven't succeeded by now, enough" drop dead date. Fingers crossed.

even if you join up and pay your dues in ways both literal and figurative, they don't give you the spreadsheet. I should ask someone about that.

Again, I've been promoting the thing not because I have been showered with favors by the BBGA (although I will take anything you have to offer, folks, because I know you monitor TFL), but becasue it is simple, allows me to really understand a formula and works, works works... :>)

...if they want bakers to use it. I guess they didn't take Bill Gates' strategy to heart: If you want to win, you have to make your format the standard. ;)I don't understand why their annotated description doesn't annotate the calculated formulae. If you're like me, you had to reverse engineering every calculation.I've checked and rechecked the calculations, but let me know if it doesn't match yours.As for the serial tables used by David et al., I too think they're just OK, but I have "trust issues" with them and always find myself checking the math to make sure X wasn't doubled or Y wasn't halved. The BBGA format is self-checking, so if the math is wrong, you'll immediately see your error. The totals won't add up.Don't give up. Your ahead of the game if you're getting into bread formulae this early. I'm a decade into it. :D

Your previous quantitative postings here reveal that you have some awesome quantitative/modeling skills. Great stuff and totally relevant, maybe even useful :-), for baking better breads. I am seriously math-challenged, so I need every crutch imaginable. But like you, yes, I reverse-engineered every friggin' cell in the sheet, going back and forth with the logic of what one would go into a new formula knowing and deciding (total dough weight, hydration, ingredient percentages, amount in each preferment), and what the sheet should help you calculate. The exercise of thinking it through was hopefully worthwhile in the long run (and man, it's been a LONG run).

I still have Excel telling me that there are "inconsistent formulas" here and there, but tracing precedents and decendents have yet to reveal that the "inconsistencies" it's finding are actually causing mis- (e.g., circular) calculations. I probably need to tweak the error notification settings to shut it up about that. It'll be GREAT to have yours to compare with.

Yes, I get errors just like that, where it complains that the formula differs from the one next to it or above it. WELL YES OF COURSE IT DOES YOU NIT. It's the first time I've ever found Excel to be so intrusive. Usually it lets me fall on my face without a whisper of warning. Maybe it got a sniff of some of my Limeaway+burned rubber smelling loaves and feels sorry for me, trying to help. Give it a rest, Excel.

Thank you so much for doing this. I have a couple of questions still vexing me:

Is the "Olive Paste" dealt with somewhat like a soaker? In other words, it doesn't modify the total formula and weight? There is also no mention of it in the Process page. How would the addition of the Paste be annotated?

Finally, is this a "real" standard recipe? Looks like it might be tasty as well as instructive.

I apologize for my modest grasp of bakers' math, but I'm working hard on it. I can see the utility of the process.

I'm glad it's helping. The baker's math will come eventually. You just have to keep doing it until you don't even have to think about it.

You could treat the olive paste both ways.

Part of the dough.

Apart from the dough.

I did it this way because that's how Bertinet does it. He creates a rye bread dough (Pâte de siegle) and then creates bread subtypes (pain) based on this dough (pâte). This subtype is Olive Bread because it fills the rye dough with an olive paste. The other subtypes use the same dough, but are filled with [nuts], [caraway/raisin], and [smoked bacon/red onion]. It's more flexible this way. You can make any number of variations on the theme; not so if you include the paste as part of the dough formula.

As for soaker, I guess you could represent the olive paste as 'a soaker' column using the BBGA format, but since it's not a soaker, probably not. Then again, olives soaked in olive oil and herbs is 'a soaker'. I guess I don't know. I wouldn't.

The recipe's real. I made it yesterday. I had to freeze half of it or it wouldn't have lasted the day. ;D

When you say "fills the rye dough". I visualize a roll of "paste" filling (like toothpaste?) laid onto a dough rectangle before shaping and then rolled into, say, a batard. Is that anywhere near reality? I see the ingredients, but how are they made into paste and what is the desired texture?

This bears on another part of the format; the Procedure. How and where is any procedure like the paste explained in the BBGA format?

I have been working with your spreadsheet, and also trying to understand the BBGA description. There is still something that doesn't make sense to me, and hopefully you (or anyone) can set me straight. When discussing levain forumlas in Part II, there is a line for "Seed" starter. There doesn't seem to be an input, however, for the hydration of the starter. Since I have been experimenting with many types of starters with different hydrations, I like to keep records of this, plus it would be helpful for the hydration of the starter to be calculated into the final formula hydration. It may be minor, and I suppose this doesn't matter if you are always using the starter, but in trying to be accurate and share my recipes on TFL wouldn't it be a useful bit of information? Did I miss something?

If we look at SD formulas from Hamelman and DiMuzio, for a white flour elaboration/build, a stiff seed is 60% hydration and a liquid seed is 100% hydration. When the seed is elaborated they use the same hydration ratio. Therefore if we look at the elaboration above the formula is using a stiff 65% seed based on elaboration.

If we look at a rye elaborations they use, the seed is 100% hydration and the elaboration is 80% hydration.

thomaschacon, and perhaps his spreasheet, seems to have gone dark. Click here for my BBGA formatted .xls. Even though it's not got thomaschacon's heroically authentic BBGA color scheme, it still works believe it or don't.

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